MIAMI -- A Florida jury has slammed the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. with $23.6 billion in punitive damages in a lawsuit filed by the widow of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer in 1996.

The case is one of thousands filed in Florida after the state Supreme Court in 2006 tossed out a $145 billion class action verdict. That ruling also said smokers and their families need only prove addiction and that smoking caused their illnesses or deaths.

Last year, Florida's highest court re-approved that decision, which made it easier for sick smokers or their survivors to pursue lawsuits against tobacco companies without having to prove to the court again that Big Tobacco knowingly sold dangerous products and hid the hazards of cigarette smoking.

In a case that has drawn attention to the level of power attained by largely unelected state boards of education over the elected representatives of the people in a state legislature, the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld Tuesday the state’s repeal of the Common Core standards, ruling that the Oklahoma legislature had the authority to repeal the controversial standards in the state’s public schools.

According to FoxNews.com, in the case of the lawsuit organized against the state by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), Oklahoma’s highest court decided 8-1 that the legislature’s action to repeal the standards was not unconstitutional.

In early June, Gov. Mary Fallin (R) signed into law a bill, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, that repealed the Common Core standards in her state and replaced them with standards to be developed by the state of Oklahoma. The new standards must be proven to be sufficiently unlike the Common Core standards. Until the new standards are developed, Oklahoma is reverting to its former PASS standards.

Former Oklahoma state attorney general Robert McCampbell, however, represented some parents, teachers, and four of seven members of the Oklahoma Board of Education, who argued against the “excessive involvement” of the state legislature with standards for Oklahoma’s public schools.

Merv Mitchell, emir of the Al-Masjid Ur-Razzaq Ul-Karim mosque in Philadelphia, was arrested and thrown in jail after he and the mosque's imam reportedly attempted to cut off the hand of a worshiper with a 2-foot machete, The Blaze reported Saturday.

According to reports, a prayer service had just ended when the unnamed victim was approached by Mitchell and the imam -- who was also not identified. The 46-year-old victim was accused of stealing jars of money from the mosque, police Lt. John Walker said.

The man denied stealing the money, but Mitchell and the imam apparently didn't believe him. Walker said the man was dragged to the backyard of the mosque for punishment.

Eyewitnesses at dozens of points across the United States have begun working together to track down where the tens of thousands of illegal alien children from Central America are ending up, because the federal government won’t disclose many details of its handling of the immigration crisis.

The information is being presented on an interactive map published by NumbersUSA, an organization that seeks to return immigration to traditional levels.

Even top government leaders have been caught off guard.

Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, said he did not know the locations of children being held in Illinois, Fox News reported.

He believes the White House does not want such information to be made public.

Narrative: On the above date and time, MSP Barrack “V” Berlin received a call for a motor vehicle collision on E/B Rt. 50 east of Rt. 707.

The investigation revealed that a black 2014 Nissan Juke operated by Julia Sanborn, was attempting to make a left turn from W/B Rt. 50 into the Baja Amusement Park. While crossing the E/B lanes of Rt. 50, the Nissan Juke was struck by a red 1998 Honda Civic operated by Hayley Brennan. The red Honda Civic was traveling in the right acceleration/deceleration lane on E/B Rt. 50 at the time of the collision.

Brennan was transported to Atlantic General Hospital for injuries suffered in the collision.

Sanborn was charged with failure to yield right of way while making a left turn.

After the 8-year-old lab's cancer returned, Roberts asked her friend, photographer Robyn Arouty, to capture Duke's last day before he was put to sleep in early July. Duke had lost one of his front legs to cancer already. The size of the tumor made it untreatable and inoperable.

The blog post on Arouty's website, called "I Died Today" and presented from the dog's perspective, has gotten worldwide attention.

Dukey's last day got hamburgers, plenty of love, a car ride and a romp through a children's water park.

“Chilling” is the word lawyers use to describe governmental behavior that does not directly interfere with constitutionally protected freedoms, but rather tends to deter folks from exercising them.

Classic examples of “chilling” occurred in the 1970s, when FBI agents and U.S. Army soldiers, in business suits with badges displayed or in full uniform, showed up at anti-war rallies and proceeded to photograph and tape-record protesters. When an umbrella group of protesters sued the government, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the protesters lacked standing — meaning, because they could not show that they were actually harmed, they could not invoke the federal courts for redress.

Yet they were harmed, and the government knew it. Years after he died, longtime FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover was quoted boasting of the success of this program. The harm existed in the pause or second thoughts that protesters gave to their contemplated behavior because they knew the feds would be in their faces — figuratively and literally. The government’s goal, and its limited success, was to deter dissent without actually interfering with it. Even the government recognized that physical interference with and legal prosecutions of pure speech are prohibited by the First Amendment. Eventually, when this was exposed as part of a huge government plot to stifle dissent, known as COINTELPRO, the government stopped doing it.

Madison — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will likely try to get involved in litigation over Wisconsin's voter ID law now being considered by appeals judges in Chicago.

"We have already filed suit in Texas and North Carolina," President Barack Obama's attorney general recently told ABC News. "I expect that we are going to be filing in cases that are already in existence in Wisconsin, as well as in Ohio."

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is defending the voter ID law. In a statement, he said Holder should focus on immigration, not Wisconsin's voting requirements.

ASSATEAGUE — The new concession operation at the Assateague Island National Seashore opened this week just 10 days after the Maryland Coastal Bays Program (MCBP) and its partner SuperFun Eco Tours signed a 10-year contract with the National Park Service.

Earlier this spring, the MCBP and SuperFun Eco Tours were selected to run the concession operations at the Assateague Island National Seashore after being the successful bidders and were awarded a 10-year contract. MCBP and SuperFun Eco Tours hit the ground running this week with the opening of their multi-faceted operation.

The Bayside Drive component of the concession operation includes a variety of rental opportunities for local residents and vacationers in the park including kayaks and stand-up paddleboards, bicycles and even clam rakes. The MCBP and SuperFun Eco Tours are also offering kayak and stand-up paddleboard tours through many areas of the National Seashore’s 31,000 pristine acres. Earlier this week, the concessioners were running electric service to the rental office.

Even in the bitterly fought primary battle between Mississippi senator Thad Cochran and his challenger, state senator Chris McDaniel, some of the radio ads that aired against McDaniel were considered especially incendiary. One charged that a McDaniel victory would set back “race relationships between blacks and whites and other ethnic groups.” Another warned that his campaign was part of an attempt to “roll back the hand of time.”

The political-action committee that aired the ads raised eyebrows from the outset.

For one thing, it had the same address, phone number, e-mail domain, and leader — the bishop Ronnie Crudup — as the Jackson-based New Horizon Church International. Crudup told Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger earlier this month that he founded the PAC and raised $200,000: “Some money from the Republicans,” some from African Americans. “I raised money from a number of sources,” he said.

As it turns out, Crudup raised all of the $144,685 his PAC took in from exactly one source: Haley Barbour’s political machine. A report filed with the Federal Election Commission reveals that Mississippi Conservatives, the political-action committee founded by the former Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman and run by his nephew, Henry, provided that money to Crudup’s group in four installments. The first, in the amount of $62,685, came on June 10, a week after the race was thrown into a runoff. Cochran and his allies were looking to increase voter turnout across the state, particularly among African Americans and Democrats who had not voted in the June 3 primary.

Those numbers are all down slightly from 2012, when about 40,000 more people visited Maryland parks, spent $4.5 million more and supported about 80 more jobs. Park visits and spending nationwide were also down slightly.

Maryland's national parks include Antietam National Battlefield, Assateague Island National Seashore and the Fort McHenry National Monument and Shrine, among others.

It is time to introduce markets into the states’ public sector labor relations systems by eliminating agency fees and allowing public employees to join competing unions or no union at all. In Harris v. Quinn, decided on June 30, the Supreme Court held that an Illinois law that forced home healthcare workers to join the Service Employees International Union or else pay an agency fee violated their First Amendment rights. Dicta in the case suggest that some members of the court are now open to asking more general questions about agency fees. State governments should seize the initiative.

Agency fees are charged to nonmembers who work in unionized, public sector settings; they typically equal the union dues. Their rationale is that nonmembers are otherwise free riders who benefit from the union without paying. That argument assumes that unions benefit all public sector workers, but they do not. Some public employees are forced to contribute to unions that reduce their pay.

OCEAN CITY – Cruisin’ promoters and Ocean City officials plan to place a greater importance on working with the business community to address concerns about destructive behavior during the twice annual events.

Last month the Ocean City Police Commission began a preliminary discussion regarding concerns over the popular Cruisin’ event that occurs in Ocean City in May and October.

Following a busy Cruisin’ event this past May, Ocean City residents vented on social media and in the media’s letters to the editor section their frustrations over massive traffic backups, infrastructure damage to roads caused by the thousands of classic cars in town spinning out and the massive amounts of litter left behind by irresponsible visitors.

A Gallup poll released today shows that one in six Americans thinks the No. 1 problem facing the country is immigration/illegal aliens. The issue is further turbocharged because it feeds into voters’ second concern, which is “dissatisfaction with government.” This is a huge shift from just one month ago, when immigration ranked fifth on the list, behind the economy; dissatisfaction with government and poor leadership; unemployment and jobs; and poor, high-cost health care. The crisis on our border has caused immigration to skyrocket to the forefront of voters’ concerns.

This is bad for President Obama and the Democrats, as the border crisis could drive turnout of conservatives and older voters who will be critical to the Republicans’ success in the 2014 midterm elections. What we don’t know is what the half life of the border crisis will be. The outrage over the debacle may continue into the fall. It’s equally likely that the furor will subside, with the border breach becoming just another pot boiling over in the Obama kitchen – joining the Veterans Affairs scandal, the Internal Revenue Service scandal, the continuing problems with Obamacare, a host of frightening national security crises, etc.

But while everyone is focused on the border at the moment, the real trouble that could swamp the Democrats continues to be the economy.

Good morning, my name is Nancy and I lost my dog on 7/14/14 around the area Paul's Place, Willards, MD. I want to ask you if you can help me adding a post about it. Her name is cookies, she's a black shihtzu-chihuahua mix, 8 years old, weights about 7 pounds and she's very friendly. She didn't have a collar on because she chews on it. My contact information is 302-448-0266. I really appreciate if you can help me find her, we miss her and needs her to come back home.

OCEAN CITY — The National Aquarium’s Marine Animal Rescue Program (MARP) last week conducted its annual dolphin count along the coast in Ocean City and Assateague amid concerns over the stress of an unusual mortality event that has lingered on since last summer.

The National Aquarium Animal Rescue Program last Friday was joined by a large group of volunteers for the annual Maryland Dolphin Count and the numbers revealed a significant decline over the number counted during the 2013 event, but aquarium officials are not alarmed. Last Friday, around 50 volunteers of all ages came out between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. to help record dolphin sightings at four locations, including the Assateague State Park day-use area and in Ocean City at 40th, 81st and 130th streets.

During the sessions, a total of 53 dolphins were counted at the four locations, which was a lower number than last year, likely due to limited visibility caused by fog. Last year, 113 dolphins were counted during the event, which is in the normal range. In 2012, just 31 dolphin sightings were recorded, representing the lowest total in recent years.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) issued a statement Wednesday that he will sign a bill passed by his state’s legislature to review and replace the Common Core standards.

As wral.com reports, grassroots groups of parents have pressed North Carolina lawmakers to repeal the Common Core standards. The state House voted 71-34, however, to approve a compromise measure that creates a new state commission to review educational standards and recommend the replacement of defective Common Core standards or those that are inappropriate.

While an earlier state House version of the bill would have outright banned the commission from retaining any of the Common Core standards, the compromise follows the state Senate’s version, which permits the commission to choose the best standards, whether from Common Core or another set of standards.

Today’s Democrats are in danger of standing for something like the very opposite of freedom.

Liberals just aren’t very liberal these days. The word “liberal” comes from the Latin word meaning freedom, and in the 19th century, liberals in this country and abroad stood for free speech, free exercise of religion, free markets, and free trade — for minimal state interference in people’s lives.

In the 20th century, New Dealers revised this definition by arguing that people had a right not only to free speech and freedom of religion but also, as Franklin Roosevelt said in his 1941 Four Freedoms speech, freedom from fear and from want.

Freedom from want meant, for Roosevelt, government provision of jobs, housing, health care, and food. And so government would have to be much larger, more expensive, and more intrusive than ever before.

That’s what liberalism has come to mean in America (in Europe it still has the old meaning), and much of the Obama Democrats’ agenda consists of logical outgrowths — Obamacare, the vast expansion of food stamps, attempted assistance to underwater homeowners.

But in some respects the Obama Democrats want to go further — and are complaining that they’re having a hard time getting there. Their form of liberalism is in danger of standing for something like the very opposite of freedom, for government coercion of those who refuse to behave the way they’d like.

Example one is the constitutional amendment, sponsored by 43 of the 55 Democratic U.S. senators, that would cut back on the First Amendment and authorize Congress and state legislatures to restrict political speech.

I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.” President Barack Obama, May 29, 2014 commencement speech at West Point

“War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”, President Dwight Eisenhower, 1947 commencement speech at West Point

“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by “a world of enemies”, “one against all”, that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.” Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951

“…An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. For, although the will of an absolute monarch is law, yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments. Even this formality is not necessary in an empire.” John Adams (1735-1826), 2nd American President

Am I alone in having the uneasy feeling, while listening to Barack Obama’s speeches, that we are witnessing an actor playing the role of an American president and carefully reading the script he has been given? As time goes by, indeed, Barack Obama seems to be morphing more and more into a Democratic George W. Bush. Those who write his speeches seem to have the same warmongering mentality as those who wrote George W. Bush’s or Dick Cheney’s speeches, ten years ago.

That’s probably no accident since Neocons occupy key positions in Barack Obama’s administration as they did under George W. Bush when they pushed the United States into the war in Iraq, and as they have also tried to push the United States toward a military showdown with Iran and as they are now attempting to provoke Russia into a military conflict. How Neocons can infiltrate both Republican and Democratic administrations and be trouble-makers in both administrations is the daily wonder of American politics!

But we know the Neocons’ “Grand Plan”. They have published it. Indeed, this is a plan that has been outlined in many reports published by the (now defunct) Project for a New American Century (PNAC), an organization created in 1997, and whose many founders became prominent members of the Bush-Cheney administration. They have rebranded themselves as the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and have now succeeded in becoming influential within the Obama-Biden administration, especially at the State Department as leftovers of former Secretary Hillary Clinton. They and their allies are the main force behind the disastrous and incoherent U.S. foreign policies being pursued by the United States government both in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe.

“Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it.” — H.G. Wells, The New World Order (1940)

Throughout our lives and throughout our culture, we are conditioned to rally around concepts of false division. We are led to believe that Democrats and Republicans are separate and opposing parties, yet they are actually two branches of the same political-control mechanism. We are led to believe that two nations such as the United States and Russia are geopolitical enemies, when, in fact, they are two puppet governments under the dominance of the same international financiers. Finally, we are told that the international bankers themselves are somehow separated by borders and philosophies, when the reality is all central banks answer to a singular authority: the Bank Of International Settlements (BIS) [5].

We are regaled with stories of constant conflict and division. Yet the truth is there is only one battle that matters, only one battle that has ever mattered: the battle between those people who seek to control others and those people who simply wish to be left alone.

The “New World Order” is a concept created not in the minds of “conspiracy theorists” but in the minds of those who seek to control others. These are the self-appointed elite who fancy themselves grandly qualified to determine the destiny of every man, woman and child at the expense of individual freedom and self-determination. Such elites are often very open about their globalist intentions and ambitions, much like author H.G. Wells, a socialist member of the Fabian Society and friend to the internationalist establishment who put forth his blueprint for world governance in the book quoted above. In this article, I would like to examine the nature of our war with the elite and why their theories on social engineering are illogical, inadequate and, in many cases, malicious and destructive.

As the state works to find places for some of the thousands illegal immigrant children crossing the Texas border into the United States, Catholic Charities in Maryland says it can provide some of them shelter.

The head of Catholic Charities confirmed to WBAL that it has space for about 50 children in Timonium.

They plan to apply to the federal government to put the children at Saint Vincent’s Villa, a facility on Dulaney Valley Road. The facility was used for special needs children.

The Pope earlier this week called the situation a humanitarian emergency and said children need to be protected and welcomed.

It was over 40 years ago that I first heard Walter Williams speak at a conference. Anyway, I think it was over 40 years ago. It could not have been less.

He and I were on what speakers call the rubber-chicken circuit as early as 1974. We spoke to high school teachers in a program sponsored by the intercollegiate Studies Institute, “The Role of Business in Society,” or ROBIS. As I recall, I had heard him speak before we were on the summer lecture circuit.

I remember very clearly his main point at one of his lectures. He said that minimum-wage legislation discriminates against teenage black males. This has been known by economists since at least the mid-1950′s. The statistical evidence on this was overwhelming. But high school teachers had not heard this.

What made Williams’ speech memorable was the fact that he clarified the reason why the minimum-wage legislation was detrimental to teenage black males. He made the observation, which nobody challenged: the teenage black males are considered undesirables by the general population. In other words, they are discriminated against. They suffer from the stereotypes attached to their particular group.

He asked the obvious question: “How does someone who is part of a group that is discriminated against find a way to prove to somebody doing the discriminating that his assessment is incorrect?” It was really this question: “How do undesirables break through the discrimination against them?”

America’s skies may be beautiful and spacious, but there’s a multitude of dangers found from sea to shining sea. From the snake and spider-infested American Southwest to the volcano strewn West Coast to the tornado and meth-scarred Midwest, this is a land that scares the stuffing right out of our Thanksgiving turkeys. As if that isn’t enough, the rest of the country is packed with even more of America’s most common fears—clowns, bears, sharks, murderers, and dentists.

Here at the real estate search site Estately we know there are hundreds of worries when choosing where to buy a home, so to help house hunters make a more informed decision we’ve mapped out where Americans’ darkest fears are most readily found. We used these 15 common fears as criteria, and then we ranked each state from 1-50 from most scary to least scary.

WEST OCEAN CITY — The local community’s generous spirit was on display in a big way this week as hundreds gathered at the Ocean City Marlin Club on Tuesday for a fundraiser to help support a family displaced by a devastating house fire in West Ocean City in late June.

The fire that gutted a West Ocean City residence on the corner of Golf Course and Old Bridge roads was one of two going on simultaneously on Thursday evening, June 26. Around 7:05 p.m. on June 26, firefighters responded to a reported house fire on Riverview Drive in a subdivision outside Ocean Pines near Showell. First-arriving units found the large, two-story waterfront home fully involved with fire. The house was occupied at the time by the owners and no injuries were reported.

About 20 minutes later, a second fire was reported at the residence in West Ocean City. First arrivers found the rear exterior deck on fire with extension inside the house. The Ocean City Fire Department responded, along with fire companies from all over Worcester, Wicomico and Sussex County, Del.

The Obama administration, in July 2013, quietly introduced a new regulation that critics say will dramatically increase Washington’s power over local zoning laws in every city and town that accepts federal block grants through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And it’s the federal grants that could be used as a hook in the nose of these cities, forcing them to house illegal immigrants against their will.

Some are calling it the “Common Core of local zoning” that has flown under the radar for nearly a year. Instead of the U.S. Department of Education dictating education standards to local school districts, this rule change would allow HUD to influence zoning laws from the biggest cities down to the tiniest towns.

The proposed rule, which is set to take effect in October, would put teeth on the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by providing a set of standards, guidelines and goals, then use data to “measure” and “assess” how well a local community is meeting its Fair Housing obligations.

Well, President Obama finally got serious about the downed civilian airplane. But this president cannot be taken too seriously, unfortunately.

Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt Thursday passionately described a key reason why Obama is unable to make authoritative statements anymore, noting that a president who is always trying to throw PR bling at the country gets lots of attention but entirely dilutes himself.

Obama of course starts out rather diluted to begin with. And his constant appearances are often goofy or demeaningly political. And then there’s the matter of his failed policies, indecision and empty threats.

But I digress.

According to Stirewalt:

His endless talking, his endless fundraising, his endless effort to control every fifteen minutes of every news cycle saps him of the ability to speak with authority and resolution when he needs to.

A police chief in Wisconsin was charged on Thursday with creating accounts on pornographic and dating websites under the name of a local Tea Party advocate to even a score with him, court records showed.

Town of Campbell Police Chief Timothy Kelemen was charged with misdemeanor unlawful use of computerized communication systems in La Crosse County, according to court records. He faces 90 days in jail if convicted.

Kelemen is accused of setting up accounts under the name of Gregory Luce. Luce and fellow Tea Party members allegedly harassed Kelemen's department after the town banned their protest signs on overpasses, a police report filed in a federal court case showed.

The report said Kelemen retaliated by using Luce's personal information to create identities on dating websites, pornography websites featuring homosexual men and HealthCare.gov.

"I'm not denying I did it ... I didn't think it was that big of a deal," Kelemen said in a video posted on the La Crosse Tea Party website, showing an interview with investigators in May. Campbell borders on La Crosse.

President Barack Obama is foregoing his usual round of weekend golf at a Washington suburban military base. Instead, he and his family are choosing what is for them a rare woodland getaway: a weekend at the presidential mountaintop retreat of Camp David.

The family was leaving Friday for the isolated and heavily guarded hideaway in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. The White House said the family weekend had already been planned and that he would return to the White House on Sunday.

The escape from the White House caps a fierce week of foreign policy eruptions, highlighted by a downed commercial jet liner over Ukraine and Israel's ground offensive into Gaza, as well as maneuvers over how to address a surge of Central American migrants at the U.S. border.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee (HVAC) held a hearing this week to review the VA’s progress in achieving the goal of ending its disability compensation claims backlog by 2015 and explore claims of whistleblower retaliation and “cooking the books” within VBA. At the hearing, Allison Hickey, VA Undersecretary for Benefits, insisted that the claims backlog has been significantly reduced. The VA has set a goal of processing all disability claims within 125 days with 98 percent accuracy. The VA claims that the disability claims backlog has been reduced by 55 percent, from more than 600,000 pending claims beyond 125 days early last year to 275,000 claims today. HVAC Chairman Jeff Miller (Fla.) and Assistant Inspector General for the VA Linda Halliday said they don’t believe the VA’s reported statistics.

Hickey indicated that VA completed a record 1.2 million disability rating claims in 2013, and that the agency is on track to complete more than 1.3 million rating claims this year and pay a total of $67 billion in benefits. Hickey also said that more than 90 percent of the claims are being processed electronically. The IG office also reports that over a two month period, nearly one-third of the adjudicated claims were inaccurate.

Besides being potentially deadly, what do diseases as seemingly different as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's disease have in common?

One word: inflammation.

Increasingly, researchers are pointing their collective finger at this familiar biological process. Cardiologist Chauncey Crandall, M.D., says he now recognizes signs of inflammation that were a prelude to his own heart problems, which were diagnosed at age 48.

He was flying home from a conference when his shoulder started to hurt. “I assumed I had strained it, lifting a suitcase, but now I realize that I had been experiencing pain in every joint in my body for about three months,” recalls Dr. Crandall, author of No. 1 Amazon bestselling the book The Simple Heart Cure and chief of the transplant program at the world-renowned Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic.

SALISBURY – Operation We Care is continuing on after seven successful years supporting Delmarva troops across the world.

On Monday evening, Jeff and Diana Merritt came before the City Council to present their organization Operation We Care as part of the city’s ongoing “Community Organization Presentation.”

Operation We Care collects, sorts, packs and sends care packages to U.S. troops, and the project continues to grow with the support of many people, local businesses and civic organizations.

According to Operation We Care, the project started in 2007 as a grassroots effort by the Eastern Shore Chapter Harley Owners Group to show support and appreciation for the brave men and women around the world protecting the citizens of the United States freedom.

The US Army confirmed Monday that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is returning to active duty just four weeks on from his return to the United States after five years as a Taliban captive - and will be working behind a desk.

'To use a slang term, he will be working a desk job,' Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the Pentagon, told ABC News.

'Sgt. Bergdahl is not restricted in any way,' he said, noting Bergdahl will reside in noncommissioned barracks. 'He is a normal soldier now.'

Col. Scott Bleichwell offered a similar description in a phone interview with MailOnline.

'It's an office job within the headquarters - just general office work,' he said.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Another Chinese company plans to invest in the Old Dominion, and Virginia Beach taxpayers will help foot the bill.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced a few weeks ago Shandong Tranlin Paper Co.’s plan to invest $2 billion in Chesterfield County. Now, China Machinery Engineering Corp. of Beijing plans to partner with a Virginia-based company to build an 18,000-seat arena and sports complex.

The 50,000-square-foot facility will cost an estimated $200 million, but that doesn’t include other costs paid by Virginia Beach, an additional $10 million for other costs, or the land the city is contributing to the deal.

The arena is meant to serve as a multi-purpose site with plans to host concerts, sporting events and maybe even circuses. And while Virginia Beach is the most populous city in Virginia, it has no major sports team.

“We are confident this is a successful model and are very excited,” said Valerie Wilkinson, chief financial officer for United States Management LLC, the Virginia-based company that submitted the plan to Virginia Beach for consideration. “This will be a year-round draw that really fits in well with the greater infrastructure of the beach.”

Hillary Clinton’s book tour was supposed to be her first step on the road to the White House. Instead her publisher is looking at a $10 million loss on her royalties alone as shelves at every big box book store groan under unsold copies of Hard Choices and instead of answering softball questions about empowering women, she was forced to discuss her defense of a twelve year old girl’s rapist.

And then there was the money question.

Like the rest of their political movement, the Clintons want to be poor in spirit and rich in mansions. They want to play the class warfare game from a private jet. Usually the media lets them get away with it. No one asks Elizabeth Warren how she combines class warfare and a small fortune. But the media hacks holding out for a Warren candidacy began hammering Hillary over her enormous wealth.

And Hillary Clinton responded with off-the-cuff lies. Her “dead broke” gaffe reminded everyone why her husband wasn’t even the embarrassing one in the bunch. At least he could lie convincingly.

Hillary’s problem is that she is the inevitable candidate that no one actually wants. Everyone agrees that she has a lock on the Democratic Party’s nomination and yet no one likes her.

BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, OH: On July 11, the community group Mothers Against Drilling In Our Neighborhoods, Inc (MADION), filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit filed by Bass Energy, Inc. and Ohio Valley Energy Systems Corporation against the City of Broadview Heights. The lawsuit, pending in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, seeks to overturn the City’s Community Bill of Rights Charter Amendment, which bans oil and gas drilling and fracking. Bass and Ohio Valley Energy claim that as corporations holding state permits, they have a “right” to drill within Broadview Heights. Residents see things quite differently.

In November 2012, Broadview Heights voters overwhelmingly adopted (67%) the Community Bill of Rights, codifying their constitutional right to local self government, their rights to clean air and water, and the right to a sustainable energy future. The City Charter Amendment prohibits new wells from being drilled in the City as a violation of those rights. The initiative was driven by City residents and members of the local community group MADION.

The national Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) offered in May to defend Broadview Heights, without charge, in the event of a legal challenge to the Charter Amendment. To date the city has not accepted the offer. According to Attorney Terry Lodge, representing the community group, "The oil companies hope to capitalize on the city's well-known hesitation to put on a real defense of the charter amendment, and that probably explains why they've kept quiet about the lawsuit. So, the citizens are stepping forward to enforce a law that they initiated and passed."

Law enforcement officers in one New Jersey city are on high alert after a warning issued by the FBI.

According to bureau sources, G-Shine Blood gang members from the Allentown area put out orders to kill law enforcement officers to retailiate against recent shootings involving a Jersey City police officer and a Bloods gang member.

Authorities said G-Shine Blood gang members KI and Rooster have "given the green light to kill law enforcement officers in response for killing a homie in Jersey City."

Both gang members are originally from the Pink Houses in Brooklyn, New York, and now live in the Allentown area, sources said.

Have you heard the one about the black attorney general who sits down with a black reporter from ABC News to talk about America’s first black president? “Sure is a lot of racism,” says the AG. Rim shot.

Yeah, not a very funny joke. But that’s the point — it’s not a joke. It actually happened last week.

Eric H. Holder Jr., the first black man ever to hold the post of attorney general, sat down with senior Justice Department reporter Pierre Thomas for an interview.

“There’s a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that’s directed at me [and] directed at the president,” he said. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. I can’t look into peoples’ hearts, look into peoples’ minds, but it seems to me that this president has been treated differently than others There’s a certain racial component to this for some people.”